Goodbye Goldenray
An odd quirk in the human brain allows us to feel that the things we love are living, even when they are manufactured objects – like boats, for instance. Things that live can also die. I’ve just been reading the writer and sailor, Peter Nichols, mourning the death of his yacht, Toad . Toad is gone. I know this absolutely as I sit here in the cockpit on what is now becoming rather a nice day. The sun is out, the sea is going down. Knowing this I look at the boat around me, the teak vent boxes I built on the cabin roof. The stainless-steel guard rail stanchions I installed. The winches, the rigging. The new compass Martin and I hooked up. The slight imperfection beneath the paint on the cabin side that I know is my plug of a hole made by Harry’s useless depth gauge. I look up and down the boat and I cannot see an inch of it that I haven’t remade according to my idea of what would make Toad the best it could be. Now I know that the leak will not get better but worse, that I mus...